Research progress of high-precision polishing technology on optical diamond material surface

Central to future optical device developments in diamond is the provision of smooth, low defect density substrate materials. Research progress of optical diamond material surface polishing technology were comprehensively reviewed, the polishing effect and the advantages and disadvantages of the current high-usage polishing methods were introduced, including mechanical polishing, thermal chemical polishing, chemical auxiliary mechanical polishing, laser polishing, plasma treatments etc. The generation of composite polishing technology helps to improve the deficiencies of the original polishing technology and obtain a smaller surface roughness, which is the main research direction at present. Super ultra-precision and high quality on optical diamond surface is the technical development trend in future. A new no contacting method of polishing optical diamond using ion beam was proposed in this paper, which has great application potential because of its advantage of super ultra-precision and no damage.